In France, since 2010, only one can be offered as legal sports betting bets on certain sports competitions and on some of the types of results or play phases.
Recently, the National Games Authority (ANJ) has reforming its “sport list” of competitions open to betting. It will come into force on March 1. Nearly 180 competitions were dismissed, including the Tunisian championship.
Indeed, the Tunisian championship has been removed for risks likely to feed manipulations. “Certain sporting events have been withdrawn from the list, either because they no longer exist or, because they no longer meet the legal criteria for registration on the list because they are devoid of stakes or notoriety (first-level Armenian football championship), or proving to be manipulation (first-level Tunisian football championship).”
According to the same source, this overhaul was guided by the search for a balance between the expectations of bettors and operators and the prevention of the risk of sports manipulations.
An expected decision
Suffice to say that this decision was expected. It should be remembered in this sense that Hichem Guirat, former national direction of arbitration of the Tunisian Professional Football League, was already in the crosshairs of French justice.
He had been indicted on September 21, 2023 by an investigating judge in Nice, chiefs of “complicity in organized gang scam”, “association of criminals” and “active corruption of actors of a sporting demonstration”, reported the French media.
Indictment
His indictment is related to the affair of the results of matches of the Tunisian championship. He is suspected of having participated in the organization of a rigged match in April 2019. Hichem Guirat was heard as defendants in the case, then he was released, while remaining at the disposal of the French judicial authorities.
In April 2019, the newspaper L’Equipe already echoed this affair, revealing that suspicious bets had been placed in France, Sunday April 7, on the USBG-ESM match on behalf of the 18th day.
The bets, more than 35,000 euros, focused on a USBG victory in points of sale by the French Games (FDJ) in the Alpes-Maritimes, mainly in Nice, according to a French official document consulted by the newspaper L’Equipe, confirming information from Romain Molina journalist.
As the newspaper L’Equipe had revealed, three people had been indicted for “scam in an organized gang”, on September 14, 2019, in this same case. They are suspected of having been informed in advance of the USBG victory against ESM and of being at the origin of fraudulent bets.
